![]() Long enough time to cover the relation with the military exercise. The BALTOPS 22 exercise was to be used as a cover to plant the camouflaged explosives which would be detonated weeks or months later by a sonar signal. The CIA eventually began crafting a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger an explosion along the pipeline. Over the next few meetings, the group debated options for an attack, including using a submarine or dropping bombs remotely. The group discussed recommendations for responding to Putin's impending invasion, and Sullivan reportedly made it clear that he wanted the group to come up with a plan for destroying the two Nord Stream pipelines and that the order comes directly for Biden himself. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that in December 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a task force composed of members from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments. At the time, the Senate had successfully passed a law that ”halted the pipeline in its tracks” as Cruz put it.Īt the time, the German government, then led by Angela Merkel, faced significant political and economic pressure to get the second pipeline online. Senate Republicans, led by Ted Cruz of Texas, repeatedly raised concerns about the political threat posed by cheap Russian natural gas during the confirmation hearing of Secretary of State Tony Blinken. Hersh recounts that opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline reached a fever pitch in January 2021, on the eve of President Joe Biden's inauguration. Biden and his team were vocal in their hostility towards the pipelines, which were seen as a means of increasing Russia's influence in Europe. The two pipelines, which ran parallel to each other for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea, originated from different ports in northeastern Russia near the Estonian border, passed near the Danish island of Bornholm, and terminated in northern Germany. Hersh reports that, President Joe Biden and his foreign policy team, including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Undersecretary of State for Policy Victoria Nuland, were strongly opposed to the Nord Stream pipelines. The deliberations reportedly involved extensive planning and strategising, indicating the high level of importance placed on the issue within the national security community. Hersh's anonymous source claimed that the issue during the debate was not whether to carry out the mission, but how to achieve the goal without getting caught. ”Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicised mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning,” Hersh writes in his article.Īccording to Hersh’s source, the decision to sabotage the pipeline came directly from US president Joe Biden and was the result of a highly secretive debate that lasted for over nine months within Washington's national security community. ![]() ![]() government was involved in the planning and execution of the sabotage, which took place on September 26, 2022. According to Hersh, an anonymous source with inside knowledge of the operation has confirmed that the U.S. Seymour Hersh, an investigative journalist with a track record of breaking major stories, published a bombshell report on Substack last week that alleges the United States was behind the explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |